Call to bolster defence with drones

A proposal to establish a European programme to develop drones will be one of the most politically sensitive ideas discussed by European Union defence ministers when they meet today and tomorrow (5-6 September).

The idea already has the strong backing of NATO’s secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who told European Voice on Monday (2 September) that NATO’s intervention in Libya in 2011 had highlighted that Europe’s military forces lacked intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. “I would very much like to see this as an opportunity to develop the European defence industry,” he added.

Consolidation of Europe’s defence industry is one of the major security themes that will be discussed at December’s European Council, which Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, said in March would largely be devoted to “the state of defence in Europe”.

European demand for drones – or ‘remotely piloted aircraft systems’, as the EU’s institutions prefer to call them – has been growing, but there has been no European supply, giving the market for what is described as a “key capability” to US manufacturers.

In a public paper that has been widely praised within Europe’s defence industry since its publication in late July, the Commission highlighted drones as a capability that would be best developed at a European level because of the research costs involved.

The European External Action Service (EEAS) makes the same argument in a wide-ranging 18-page draft review of Europe’s security and defence that defence ministers will discuss this week. The paper, seen by European Voice, suggests that more EU funding – some of it from structural funds intended for Europe’s poorer regions – should be directed into research and development of drones and other ‘dual-use’ technology, for use for military and civilian purposes. It notes that budget cuts resulted in an 18% reduction in spending on the research and development of military technology between 2007 and 2011.

Civil liberties

Officials and diplomats believe that EU co-operation on drones is likely to be one of the major specific results of December’s summit. However, member states’ purchase of US drones and the possibility of deploying them along the EU’s borders have been criticised by civil-liberties groups such as Statewatch, and the proposal comes at a time when the US’s lethal use of drones and its surveillance programmes are the subject of much public criticism.

Earlier this year, Germany halted its Euro-Hawk surveillance drone project. A non-German official argued, however, the political sensitivities could be overcome, noting that the United Nations uses drones in peacekeeping and that “in the Euro-Hawk debate, the arguments is that ‘it is a bloody scandal that we have wasted so much money’, not the fact that they were developing this capability”.

The drone project would reinforce the military dimension of the EU’s efforts to create a ‘single European sky’, which intends to consolidate air-traffic management systems in Europe. It would also complement EEAS proposals to develop the EU’s space strategy.